Unplugged
by memorysdaughter
Summary: As Afterlife falls, Simmons finds an Inhuman who's been abandoned and left to die. Brought back to the Playground, the girl's powers and her physical condition spiral out of control, threatening her and everyone around her, forcing Skye and Simmons to abduct her to keep her safe.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Hi! I know I'm continually crazy for starting another long-termer, but I've had this one in the works for awhile and I want to get the first part out there. This one might not be updated as often as the other four longer-termers, but will be updated regularly. Hopefully this will mean that I can give you longer chapters each time.

This story features a character I created for an SYOC story, "The Spec-Ops Team 2," but the arc she takes in each story will be different for various reasons.

I look forward to hearing what you think!

Enjoy!

* * *

On the night before everything changed, Allie snuck out of bed and padded out of the house, taking the short walk up the trail that led to the gates at the top of the hill, the one that overlooked the mountain. Though the torches were lit, the mountain was shrouded in darkness. Allie could still feel it – how could she not? It sang in her blood, like most of the world around her.

She sat down on her favorite rock, still warm from the day's sun, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Above her the stars were sprinkled across the ebony sky like glitter on black velvet. The world was so big, and she was so small. And tomorrow she would be someone else entirely. Would the stars still look the same? Would they still love her in the same way?

She heard the footsteps before her brother could even speak. "Go away, Patrick."

"What are you doing out of bed?"

"Same thing you are."

"Sneaking up on my bratty sister in the dark?"

"I'm not bratty, and you couldn't sneak up on me if you wanted to."

Patrick's face softened as he considered the stubborn little girl on the rock in front of him. "You should have woken me up. I would have come with you."

He didn't sit down next to her, knowing his sister preferred her space, but he stood close by. "Are you worried about tomorrow?"

Allie nodded.

"Plenty of people go through the Mist and they come out just fine. Perfect, or better."

" _You_ didn't go through."

"That wasn't my decision, and you know that."

"But if _you_ didn't go through, how come _I_ get to go through?"

"Jiaying knows what she's doing."

Allie looked at him solemnly. "I don't want to do it, Patrick."

Now Patrick did sit down next to her. "It's something very important to Mom and Dad."

He wanted to hug her, kiss her, play with her long braid, but he knew she'd just push him away. Instead he said, "But you don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Allie tilted her head. "Jiaying says I have to."

Suddenly desperate to be closer to him, she crawled into his lap and snuggled up against him. "I'm scared," she whispered, her breath hot against his neck. "I want you to go with me."

"You know I can't do that."

She slipped her thumb into her mouth, something she normally _never_ did anymore (she was five years old, for crying out loud), and leaned against Patrick, hearing his heartbeat like a faraway series of drumbeats.

Patrick brought one hand up and gently brushed her hair off her forehead.

"If I don't go, Mom and Dad and Jiaying and Gordon, they'll all be mad at me. I don't want them to be mad at me."

"Nobody will be mad."

"Jiaying will be mad. She told me so," Allie said, her voice somewhat muffled by her thumb.

"I won't be mad," Patrick said softly. "I'm on _your_ side, Lis, and I always will be."

She loved that he called her "Lis" – he was the only one who did. She was getting drowsy now, the stars twinkling above her as though dancing gently through the cosmos.

"Patrick?"

"Hmm?"

"Will you still love me even if I'm mean and horrible and I kill people?"

"Who told you you're going to be mean and horrible and kill people?"

"Nobody," Allie said, and there was a long, guilty pause. "Maybe somebody, but it doesn't matter."

"You're going to be wonderful and brilliant and you're going to help people," Patrick promised.

"Patrick?" Sleep was truly coming for her, her eyes growing heavy as she reached for his hand.

"Hmmm?"

"I love you, okay?"

"I love you too."

For the last words she'd ever speak to her brother, they were pretty good.

* * *

She didn't remember much of what happened after the Mist came to get her. She still thought of it that way, since it was nothing like the peaceful and gentle transition the Elders always talked about. It had been vicious, and it had _hurt_.

She remembered darkness, and then shattering rocks falling around her, and seeing the temple go dark in her vision. When she woke up things were even worse.

On the nights when the nightmares got too close for comfort, when she didn't want to wake Patrick up from his pallet next to her bed, she'd stare up at the skylight and catalogue all the things she could still do, counting them the way some people count sheep, until she was calm enough to fall back to sleep.

 _Breathe. Swallow (most of the time). Move my eyes. Move my pointer fingers._

There was the whole thing she could do in her head, with all the benefits of being a cyberpath, but since the Mist had given that to her, she didn't count it as _hers_. She'd repeat her four remaining abilities over and over in her head until they became a rhythmic lullaby entwined with Patrick's breathing, and she'd find that the simple harmony was enough to chase the monsters from her dreams.

* * *

"We need to talk about the Shinn girl," Jiaying said abruptly to Gordon.

The sandy-haired man had been in the middle of a conversation with a young man, but upon acknowledging Jiaying's presence he quickly finished his discussion and turned to Afterlife's leader. "Of course," he said. "Has she stabilized?"

Jiaying pursed her lips. "No."

"Something about her transformation went awry."

Jiaying nodded. "I have the medical team looking into her genetic makeup, to see if the issue was present before we sent her through. If they do not find anything, then…"

"Then she's the one in a million," Gordon concluded, speaking of the small percentage of Inhumans whose transition through the Mist caused them severe physical or mental damage.

For a moment Jiaying didn't speak. Then she said, "She told me she didn't want to go through. Begged and pleaded for me to let her go home."

Gordon considered this. "It was her time," he said. "This was her day."

Again Jiaying was silent.

"You're not second-guessing yourself?" Gordon rubbed his forehead. "The Elders agreed – it was to be her and not her brother."

"I know it will never be her brother," Jiaying retorted. "But a five-year-old?"

"One of the youngest we've transformed," Gordon allowed. "But no matter what happened to her, none of this was your fault, Jiaying."

"You don't think I know that?" she snapped. "But you go in there and tell Marianna that, because at the moment she's still waiting for her daughter to wake up, and we have no idea _if_ that will even happen."

"She'll wake up." Gordon studied Jiaying. "You're not comparing her to someone else, are you, Jiaying?"

The scarred woman's face allowed a small smile. "Only as much as I compare every little girl with brown eyes to my Daisy," she informed him. "It broke me when she was taken from me, and I swore that I wouldn't let anyone else suffer in the ways I have."

"Aliselyn will wake up," Gordon repeated. "There are some things a person just knows."

* * *

The head of the medical team supervising Allie's care was an Inhuman named Grace, who gave Jiaying and Gordon a stern look when they entered the treatment pavilion.

"Still nothing?" Jiaying asked.

The doctor stepped towards them, holding out printouts of test results. "The Mist triggered something in her – something I've never seen before. When it transformed her DNA, it also caused all of the major cell groups in her muscle fibers to start deteriorating at a rapid rate. She's quickly losing strength and muscle tone. If I could compare it to anything, it would be spinal muscular atrophy – a genetic muscle-wasting disease."

"What's the long-term prognosis?" Gordon questioned.

Grace shook her head. "Most of the kids with the most severe type die before their second birthday, and sometimes that's even with extensive medical care and supervision. She's still breathing on her own, but at the rate her cells are deteriorating I'd say her growth will be stunted, her spine will bow and curve outwards, her limbs will eventually be frozen into one position, and she'll lose the ability to swallow."

It sounded horrible to Jiaying, who was trying very hard not to think of Daisy losing everything like that. "What can we do?"

"At the moment? Continue the transition. As far as long-term treatment, we need to put in a permanent feeding tube as soon as possible, and obtain some medical equipment that can assist in clearing her airway and preventing her limbs from contracting."

"Is she in pain?"

"No," Grace replied. "We've made sure of that."

* * *

Eleven years later Aliselyn Darianne Shinn lay in her most comfortable position – somewhat on her left side, pillows supporting the majority of her body. Her spine had shifted and bowed due to loss of muscle stability around it, and what on anyone else should have resembled a straight line instead seemed to make a tight, pinched C-shape with a twist at the top. Nothing on her body was in a line; her spinal deformity caused her torso to always be out of line with her hips, and her legs, weakened by years without standing or proper stretching, frogged up towards her body, splaying her hips and her knees out to the sides. Her toes pointed like a ballerina's, and no amount of physical therapy could fix that. Her arms were locked in towards her body as well, the backs of her pointer fingers just brushing her shoulders, palms facing somewhat outward.

She was a freak. A crippled weirdo, dependent on her brother for absolutely everything.

Well, except for _one_ thing.

She turned her gaze to the computer suspended above her. Like the girl herself, the laptop was supported by a variety of different methods, all of which enabled Allie to slide through cyberspace. On rough days Patrick had to prop her elbows so her pointer fingers could come in contact with the keyboard, but for the most part, Allie's cyberpathic connection to the world of electronics was capable of operating without touching – or even being in the same room.

Now she flicked her gaze to the computer screen, and as if by magic, words appeared on the screen. Seconds later, they were spoken aloud by a computerized voice, female, with a British accent. "Patrick, take me outside. It is time for the fireworks."

Her brother groaned, having just gotten comfortable on his pallet. "You are so _needy_ ," he groaned dramatically.

She rolled her eyes. "I want to see the fireworks."

"Everyone wants to see the fireworks, Lis."

" _Patrick_ ," she typed firmly.

"Fine, fine," he groused and rolled over, looking at her seriously. "You okay?"

Her body was generally always wracked with pain in some part, and she was so tired that she knew her facial muscles were spasming, but she forced it all away and flicked her eyes upwards, telling Patrick _yes_ silently.

"Don't lie to me." Patrick stood and moved towards her. "Lis, it's okay to be in pain."

 _No, it's not_ , Allie thought, looking up at him. Everything Patrick had had, he'd given up to stay with her, to keep her safe, to take care of her. When they'd been forced out of the house they'd shared with their parents and taken to this dusty and unused temple, Patrick hadn't complained once. He'd set to work making it the brightest, cleanest, most organized dwelling in Afterlife. Now it felt more like home than any place Allie could remember. She wanted to be better for him.

He reached out, obviously getting ready to scoop her up and take her outside to see the fireworks for Chinese New Year, but she tensed and winced, sucking in a painful breath.

"Lis," Patrick said sternly.

"I don't want any more pain meds," Allie typed. "They make me fuzzy and nauseous and I can't think and I can't work."

Patrick leaned down and took one of her skinny, fragile arms in his hand, intently looking at the purple band strapped around her wrist. It was a pedometer, but since Allie never walked, Patrick had set it to record her heart rate and he used it to assess when she was in pain but claiming she wasn't, or when she was overloaded and needed to shut down but claiming she didn't. "One forty-five, hummingbird," he informed her. "That's the pain zone."

" _I don't want the meds_ ," she typed fiercely. "I want to see the fireworks."

Patrick's brown eyes, so like her own, regarded her seriously. "Fireworks, then shut down. You need to rest."

Allie didn't fight him on that. She was exhausted, and she knew from experience that it would get worse before it got better.

Patrick scooped up his sister, cradling her with one hand under her neck and the other under her knees. Allie had no head control and her deformities made it difficult for her to lay flat or sit upright, so her options usually were to lay on her bed or the floor, or to be carried in Patrick's arms.

He took her outside and Allie felt the night breeze brush her face. She could hear it twining around the wind-chimes hung from the corners of their home, singing their songs into the darkness.

Patrick sat down on a well-padded section of hillside and shifted her in his arms. "You okay?" he asked.

She flicked her eyes up.

For a few long moments they were together, silent, in the darkness. Allie could feel Patrick's strong arms under her, and he relished in the quick, short pants that were her breath. He was able to shift enough to see the pedometer. "Ninety-two. That's more like it."

Allie rolled her eyes, grateful for the almost-darkness.

When the fireworks burst across the sky like brightly-colored handprints, Allie remembered how much she adored them. Fireworks were so ephemeral and transient – they were and then they weren't, all at once.

It was like that five-year-old girl she'd been once upon a time. That girl no longer existed, and in her place was this twisted, helpless young woman who had never left Afterlife and yet left it every day, streaming herself around the world. She was, and then she wasn't, millions of times a day. She could dip her toes into India, spiral back to Poland, sneak up on Canada, and traipse through South Africa –

… but there was only one place she truly wanted to be.

Home, with Patrick, where she was safe.

 _I'm on_ _your_ _side, Lis, and I always will be._

* * *

Allie lost track of time after the first day or so. Patrick had just finished packing their things and readjusting her position when Gordon teleported into the room in a flash of blue light, grabbed Patrick, and disappeared again.

" _Lis!"_ was the last thing she heard Patrick say.

Gordon didn't come back for her.

Allie hadn't been expecting him to come back anyway.

More than forty-eight hours later (though she didn't really know it had been that long), night fell and Allie forced herself to keep breathing. Her chest was rattly and she was terrified – earlier she'd heard yelling outside and something that sounded like explosions. She was locked in position and everything ached, and the heart rate monitor around her wrist had gone off so often that the little house around her sounded like a time bomb.

She needed to be suctioned, needed her mouth clear, needed to be flipped and have her limbs untangled.

She needed Patrick.

She wanted to cry, but she knew it would make her breathing worse, so she bit her lips and forced herself to remain strong.

 _Someone will come for you_.

Allie didn't know who, or when, but Patrick had promised someone was going to find her.

She flicked her eyes up to the ceiling, the sparkling mobiles dangling overhead catching her attention, and forced her tired, ragged body to send out another pulse of energy, searching for _any_ piece of equipment she could worm into.

The energy rose up from her twisty body and she pushed it as far as she could. Though she couldn't see it – no one could – she had always imagined it as an indigo thread connecting her to the rest of the world, branching out into helixes and vines, tunneling out with the strength of a charging rhino, leaving her broken physical form behind.

Allie didn't have to wait long; the energy slammed into something and she gasped.

Big. It was big, whatever it was. And powerful.

Allie flooded it with all of her remaining strength, turning those indigo helixes into zeroes and ones, pulsing out her message in time with her rapid heartbeat.

 _Help. Needhelp. Pleasehelp. Afterlife. Temple. Behindalltheothers. Pleasehelp. Can_ _'tbreathe._

The message spooled out into the world, into whatever that big thing was – _airplane? Feels like an airplane_ – and as it left her spastic frame Allie's arms jerked up, her hand hitting her face. It moved her head only an inch or two, but it was enough to compress her airway further. She gagged and choked.

 _Patrick, you promised._

Allie had one more pulse in her, weaker than the last one, and then she would surrender to the rasp in her throat and the pain throbbing through her. She would go into the darkness afraid but hopeful, just like the five-year-old girl she'd once been, facing down the Mist.

 _Help. Needhelp. Pleasehelp. Afterlife. Temple. Behindalltheothers. Pleasehelp. Can_ _'tbreathe._

* * *

Coulson slapped the side of the monitor, the sound echoing through the quinjet. "What the hell's all this?" he grumbled at it.

"Sir, perhaps physical force isn't the way to conquer technical issues," Simmons suggested. "I can take a look."

She stepped up next to him, staring at the jumbled letters cascading down the screen. "Is there a way to slow down the refresh rate?"

Coulson turned to her with a furrowed brow.

"Skye and I… well, we've traded tips," Simmons said modestly.

"I'll twist some knobs," Coulson replied. "That's all I can do."

As Simmons watched Coulson moving the controls on the monitor she tried to quell the sickening feeling she'd had in her stomach since she'd left Skye alone in Afterlife. She was trying so hard to push it down that she didn't realize the message had taken shape until Coulson muttered, "Oh, shit."

"What?" Simmons snapped herself out of self-hatred to read the message.

 _Help. Needhelp. Pleasehelp. Afterlife. Temple. Behindalltheothers. Pleasehelp. Can_ _'tbreathe._

"I know where that is," Simmons said before she could stop herself. "I saw it when… when Skye's mother…"

She shook her head. "We have to go in."

"We can't afford to do that," Coulson said. "It could be a trap."

"It's not," Simmons said.

"You don't know that."

"I know I'm a trained medical professional, and someone out there can't breathe," Simmons replied tartly. "You can come with me, or you can just wait for me to get back."

Coulson considered this. "We're still waiting for May," he said, and Simmons breathed a sigh of relief.

As she grabbed her kit she heard Coulson's voice: "You've got twenty minutes. I'm not staying here in the dark any longer. Too many people here want to shoot us."

* * *

Allie's vision was getting dim; the glittering mobile overhead remained the last thing she could see. It was the kind of situation where she wished she could twist her fingers together. It seemed like the kind of thing one should do in this kind of situation, but her arms were, as always, locked against her shoulders, her knuckles brushing the thin material of her dress. Her raspy breaths shook the paper pinned to her chest, and between the rasps and the fluttering paper and the beeping of the heart rate monitor it sounded like a party in the empty room.

She thought a lot about death, probably much more so than other sixteen-year-olds, probably because she was so close to it at any one time. There were many things about death that didn't scare Allie. She relished the thought of seeing people she loved who had gone on before her; though she wasn't really sure that her father was dead, her grandmother definitely was. She also wanted to know what it was like to walk, and run, because after eleven years trapped in her twisty, pained body held prisoner by her own mind, she had mostly forgotten what those were like. She wanted to be free from pain. She never wanted to have another nightmare.

At the same time Allie only wanted to live. She wanted to fight to see Patrick and her mother again. To find her father. To finally control her powers to the point where over-use didn't threaten to give her a stroke or pinch off blood flow to her brain and cause her to drop unconscious. To find a cure – if there was one – for her muscle wasting, one that might let her sit upright or eat by mouth again.

She closed her eyes. She was so tired.

* * *

Coulson and Simmons waited until they'd slid down the side of the hill before turning on their lights. Coulson swore and stumbled further, but Simmons switched on her headlamp and hurried ahead of him, trusting he'd regain his footing and continue to cover her back.

Simmons moved quickly towards the bright turquoise building at the very edge of Afterlife. She didn't hear anything, or see anyone ahead of her, but someone sending out a message about not being able to breathe might not be able to move or make noise any longer.

The door was slightly ajar, so Simmons waited for Coulson to move through the opening first before she followed carefully.

Coulson turned towards her as she shut the door carefully behind her and put a hand to his lips. He scouted ahead a few yards, his flashlight scanning the room swiftly.

From the outside the turquoise temple had seemed to be like all of the other buildings in Afterlife – a multi-roomed edifice. Now Simmons could plainly see that it was only one room, but fastidiously neat. It seemed to function just like a studio apartment; it was furnished with a dresser, an armchair, a small eating area, a bed and a small futon, and…

"Jesus," Coulson whispered. "Holy… holy shit."

Simmons realized she'd fallen several steps behind him and hurried to catch up. She stopped short as she realized what had caused Coulson such anguish.

There was a human figure – _sort of_ – on the bed. It was a horrifying sight, a girl child of an indeterminate age, no more than a series of skinny twig-like limbs and a hideously deformed torso. Her spine was gruesomely twisted and arched, her legs were frogged up towards her body, and her arms were locked in position against her body.

"Is she alive?" Coulson whispered.

Simmons took a few steps forward and nearly tripped over a set of luggage that was in the middle of the floor. "Oof."

She drew closer to the misshapen girl and noticed a small red light blinking on the girl's painfully skinny wrist. "Her heart's still beating."

"How do you…?"

Simmons tentatively grasped the girl's wrist and ever-so-gently rolled her towards Coulson. "She's wearing a heart monitor."

"What's that?" Coulson asked, nodding at what seemed like a piece of paper stuck to the girl's dress.

Simmons set her kit on the floor and pulled the paper until it came free. " _To whomever finds my beloved sister: I'm Patrick Shinn and this is my little sister Aliselyn. I call her Lis. Others call her Allie. She's sixteen and though she doesn't look like it, she's extremely powerful. She is an Inhuman. I am not. It's a long story, and there's more information on it in her care book in the blue rucksack, but all you need to know is that my mother and I are being taken out of here so Jiaying can ensure Lis' death. I'm hoping you'll find her before that happens. Please take good care of her until I can fight my way back to her. Yours most gratefully, Patrick Shinn."_

Simmons handed the note to Coulson and bent down. As she leaned in she could hear the girl – _Lis, or Allie_ – breathing, albeit raggedly.

"She needs her airway suctioned," Simmons said, her voice loud in the room as she pulled out supplies. "We can figure the rest out when we get her back to the plane."

"We can't take her with us," Coulson said, looking up at Simmons with alarm. "It says she's powerful. She could bring down the jet."

Simmons moved in with the suction tube, moving it around in the girl's mouth and throat. As she finished the girl opened her eyes and made a feeble cry. It sounded like a lost kitten.

When Simmons turned back to Coulson she wasn't surprised to see his expression had softened. "She comes with us," he said.

* * *

Allie woke with a mask over her face pushing air into her, and the first thing she realized was that she wasn't in pain. It was interesting and terrifying all at once. How was she was supposed to know if she was real?

Had she died in their little turquoise house?

She let out a whimper and fought off tears. _Patrick! You promised!_

"Hey, hey, it's all right," a calm voice said. "You're safe now."

Allie tried to turn her head but couldn't; she had to settle for waiting until the speaker moved into her line of sight. She saw a lovely woman with long brown hair and dark brown eyes, and Allie wondered if that was what she _could_ have looked like, had her body not been warped by the Mist.

"Hi," the woman said. "I'm Skye. And you're Allie. You're safe. Did I say that already?"

She leaned in closer to Allie. "Do you speak English? I'm not, like, fluent in Chinese or anything, but May is and I can go get her if you…"

Allie sent out a rush of invisible indigo helixes so quickly that the monitor she'd aimed them towards let out a shower of sparks.

"Okay, okay," Skye said, holding her hands up. "You understand."

"MASK OFF," Allie forced the computer to say.

"I'll have to check with Simmons…"

"MASK OFF," the computer barked again.

"Okay," Skye said, and carefully she removed the mask.

Allie gasped as she readjusted to breathing on her own. It was an amazing, exhilarating feeling.

"You're not going to hurt anyone, are you?" Skye asked gently.

 _Why would I hurt anyone?_ Allie thought.

"Or yourself?"

She furrowed her brow at Skye, and then pulsed energy over towards the computer in the corner. "Lady, I can't even swallow on my own. How in the hell am I going to hurt myself or anyone else?"

Skye laughed at that. "Anyone ever tell you that you're pretty angry for a little kid?"

Allie raised her eyebrow, though the movement shot pain back through her head and neck and the saliva pooling in her mouth choked her. "I'm not a little kid," the computer informed Skye. "I'm sixteen."

She wheezed and gasped. "Suction. SUCTION," the computer ordered.

Skye calmly reached up above Allie's head and brought a thin flexible tube down, carefully clearing the tiny girl's mouth and throat.

"Thank you," the computer said when Skye had finished.

For a few beats Skye just stared at Allie.

"So you're wondering why I look like a skeleton," Allie said through the computer. "Me too."

At that Skye cracked a hint of a smile. "I was actually wondering how you got so good with computers."

Allie frowned. Suddenly she didn't want to talk anymore, despite all of her questions. She squirmed just a bit and sent another question to the computer. "Where are we?"

"A secure base called the Playground."

"Operated by whom?"

"SHIELD."

 _SHIELD_. The very word sent a jolt of electricity through Allie's veins and she whimpered, her fingers flicking furiously against her shoulders.

The computer began speaking completely against her will. "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no."

Fear flooded Allie's veins and she started to sob.

"Go home. Oh no. Go home," the computer continued as Allie's fragile body shook. The girl herself had completely forgotten that there was no home for her to go back to.

"Oh, sweetheart," Skye murmured, and she slipped onto the bed with Allie, scooping up the tiny girl. Allie was surprised to find that Skye knew exactly how to hold her – one careful arm supporting her neck, the other under her legs, entwining the two in an odd but somehow comforting embrace.

"I don't know what you've been told about SHIELD," Skye said carefully once Allie's sobbing had slowed. "I know there was a lot of confusing information being spread around Afterlife."

 _How do you know?_ Allie wondered.

"My mother… she wanted to hurt people, and she very nearly succeeded."

"Your mother was at Afterlife?" the computer asked.

Skye nodded.

"What was her name?"

"Jiaying."

Allie froze.

"It's all right," Skye said. "She can't hurt you anymore."

The tears came back and Allie started to shake again.

"Slow down," Skye said. "Type for me what's wrong, internet in a bottle."

The nickname, so close to Patrick's "girl-shaped internet," calmed Allie, and she sent out another pulse. "She's already hurt me. It's a long story, but she took my father. Then my mother. And now my brother. They're gone. It's just me."

Skye was quiet for a moment. "If they're still out there, we'll find them."

Allie felt pain creeping back in around the edges of her fuzzy disconnection, and she knew her pulse was increasing thanks to the beeping heart rate monitor still strapped around her wrist. She could feel a shut-down coming on.

"I'm going to shut down and it's frightening and I'm so sorry and I wish I could stay awake and …"

Skye stroked Allie's hair. "It's all right. Whatever happens, you're safe here. We're on your side."

Again, it perfectly mirrored something Patrick had said, and as Allie's heart sped beyond all reckoning and her teeth chattered and her spine arched and her hands went blue, she went into the darkness not in fear, but in relative calm.

 _We're on your side –_

 _I'm on_ _your_ _side, Lis –_

 _-_ _you're safe here._

 _\- and I always will be._


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Welcome back to "Unplugged." This is the long-term story I just had to write, but which I'm not going to be updating as frequently as my four other long-term stories. The four long-terms are "unspeakable," "stretta malaguena," "Shaken," and "now hear this," and that's the update schedule for now. The update schedule is: whatever long-term story was updated last will be the next one updated; you can see the order as it stands at any time on my profile page. "Unplugged" will be updated less frequently and so I don't count it in the schedule, but each update will be significantly longer than a normal one.

I'm still dealing with a lot of grief after losing someone close to me who was like a sister, and I'm having some really rough days, but I feel my creativity coming back to me every now and then. This update took me about a week to write, but unlike all of my other stories (so far), "Unplugged" is completely plotted out. I look forward to bringing you more of it.

Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/follows/favorites. You're amazing! I love to hear what you think about the stories and I'm never offended by questions, requests, criticism, or suggestions.

I'm memorysdaughter on Tumblr as well if you'd like to join me there.

You may notice a shift in this chapter from the previous chapter... perhaps from Season 2 to Season 3? (That's what it is.) Trust me, I'll explain everything.

Enjoy!

* * *

Coulson sighed and rubbed his face. In the containment pod in front of him, the tiny, deformed Inhuman girl continued doing exactly what she'd been doing for the last six months – nothing. She was in a vegetative-like state, and the entire SHIELD team had no idea if she'd wake up. The machines, supplies, and six binders worth of information found next to her at Afterlife had helped to keep her alive, but there was no sign of change in her condition.

He looked back down at the book before him. Allie's brother had written seemingly hundreds of pages on her condition, including what he called "shut-down." He wasn't sure why he was reading it again – the first ten read-throughs had brought him nothing but more questions.

 _Lis goes through shut-down randomly. I don't always know when it's about to happen, although she always does. I've learned to anticipate it by tracking her heart rate, but she is so stubborn that sometimes I'm convinced she's learned how to lower her heart rate as to avoid worrying me. She hates anyone fawning over her or making her feel like she's a burden._

 _The length of the shut-down depends on a few factors: Lis' general health, the amount of stress on her body, mental exertion including using her gifts, and about a hundred other things that happen in our lives that could or could not be connected. Lis has never left Afterlife, so I'm not sure what would happen if she was to be taken somewhere else. The shortest shut-downs are between an hour and three hours; the longest one she's ever gone through was nine months._

 _I have no idea what a shut-down really is. She can't tell me where she goes or what she's doing, and I genuinely believe she has no idea, that she isn't conscious. I believe it's some sort of "reboot" for her system, which puzzles me, because often she wakes up weak and disoriented._

 _At first I had no idea what to do during a shut-down. I still don't, really, but I've figured a few things out. The majority of these things are also included in her basic care section (part one) because most of them are the same._

 _Keeping Lis breathing is extremely important, obviously. She has a portable ventilator (image of the entire setup enclosed on next page) which has a backup battery but also plugs into an outlet; tubing connects from the machine to the mask and the mask goes over her face. All of her settings are locked into the machine, but if something in her condition changes, you might have to find someone with medical training to change them._

 _She will need mouth, throat, and nasal suction at intervals. I've put the suction machine (gray) in her kit as well as a series of tubes we use to perform those tasks. Lis can't always swallow and has a tendency to let saliva build up in her mouth so as to avoid "annoying" me. Please don't let her do that. She will choke and aspirate and end up with pneumonia, and although I'm sure you have access to better medical resources than we're given here at Afterlife, it's never good for her._

 _I try to use the Cough Assist (green handle) every two to four hours. It simulates a cough, pushes air in and out of Lis' lungs to help her clear secretions she can't cough up on her own. Follow that with suctioning to get things out of her mouth and throat. There's instructions on the next page on how to use it while she's on the ventilator; if she's awake and conscious follow the treatment plan from the basic care chapter._

 _She has a feeding tube. The small port in her stomach connects to a series of tubes and the liquid nutrition is pushed through by a pump. I've packed all of the food we had left, and I know it's not much. I'm sorry. I hope you'll be able to find a source of similar nutrition if you can't find the same thing wherever you are. Dosages, mixture instructions, and feed rates are on the next page._

 _Lis would be perfectly happy to stay in one position all of the time because of her body shape, but it's not good for her. She needs to be rolled side to side every two hours to prevent bed sores and infections. She can't move anything but her pointer fingers and her eyes, so she's basically dead weight. She will not be able to help you turn her body, and that's doubly true during shut-down._

 _I cannot stress how important it is to_ _shut down all computers_ _and similar equipment during the shut-down. Lis' gift means that her brain seeks out any of those things, anything with a "brain," and her consciousness will automatically flow towards those, even if she is not consciously trying to do so. If you're able to, put her ventilator in a Faraday cage or a metal box; it slows down her ability to "find" it and is often enough to force her brain to move on. We haven't had much experience with certain types of computerized systems, so I have no idea what she would do to a system of power or water that's controlled by a central computer, for instance, or something like an aircraft. Or a pacemaker. Or… God, I can't even imagine. Lis is unpredictable at best._

 _I know this is a lot of information and I'm sorry to burden you with her care. She has never been a burden to me, but I understand how this will be absolutely overwhelming. Please let her know that I love her very much and I am coming back for her. I promise._

"Reading that again, Phil?" Daisy asked. She handed him a cup of coffee.

"Thank you," he said. "Yes, I'm trying to figure out if there's anything we can do to help her."

"It's been six months," Daisy pointed out. "We rescued Simmons from an alien planet in less time than that."

"You said she was scared," Coulson said, sitting back and taking a sip of coffee. "Scared of what?"

Daisy leaned against the table. "First she was scared when I said we were with SHIELD. Then I told her who my mother was… and that made it worse. Apparently Jiaying took her entire family from her."

Coulson nodded.

"And then she _apologized_ to me," Daisy went on softly. "She was sorry that something was happening that she couldn't control or explain."

Coulson looked over at her, unsurprised to see that her gaze was on the toes of her boots. "Projecting a bit, are we?"

"She's terrified. She's alone in the world, she's absolutely defenseless… I'm surprised she even woke up after we got her out of Afterlife."

Daisy sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "Also, your dragon woman is on the warpath again. One of her lackeys showed up and he'd like to have a word with you."

"Which one?"

"Umm… Gibbs?"

"The one with the big mole next to his nose?"

"No. The really sweaty one."

"Oh, yeah, Stochnik." Coulson stood up. "I'll go see if I can stop myself from offering him a towel while we have our chat. Will you sit with her?"

Daisy nodded. She sat down in the chair Coulson vacated, pulling up a series of news reports on her tablet. Since Afterlife fell, reports of a mysterious young man were popping up all over the United States. He'd been found in hospitals, banks, universities – often in locked rooms or completely secure facilities. He disappeared into thin air, going invisible, whenever he was threatened.

And he made only one demand. _Where is my sister? Find me my sister!_

Daisy had never met Patrick Shinn, but she had a good idea of his priorities. But his notes had claimed he wasn't an Inhuman, so how did he have the ability to get into locked places or disappear into thin air? It was a mystery Daisy hadn't solved yet, meaning that so far the score on the Shinn siblings was Daisy/SHIELD zero, Shinns two.

She heard a prolonged _beep_ and a series of clicks from the pod, and jerked her head up. She was absolutely floored by what she saw.

Allie's eyes opened and the tiny girl began flicking her pointer fingers at her shoulders.

"She woke up," Daisy breathed. " _She woke up."_

She grabbed her phone. "Bobbi? Get Simmons, and whoever else you can grab from the med staff."

"What? Why? Are you all right?"

"She's awake."

* * *

Everything hurt. She was definitely back in her own body.

 _Where did I go?_

Everything was blurry. She blinked, feeling her heart rate speed up as she waited for her vision to clear, for her surroundings to become more familiar.

 _How long has it been?_

 _Where's Patrick?_

A wave of pain grabbed her at the waist and she let out an involuntary wail. It was kitten-weak and immediately sucked up into the ventilator mask over her face.

Allie blinked again, just in time to see two women enter the… the room? It was small and all of it was white. She hadn't been there before. One of the women was blond and lithe, wearing a blue lab coat. The other was… Skye? Her hair was shorter and something in her face had changed, but it was her.

"Hi, Aliselyn," the blond woman said. "I'm Bobbi. Daisy and I want to check on you before we remove the ventilator. Is that all right?"

She held up a tablet, screen towards Allie. "Feel free to use this to talk to us."

Allie flicked her eyes towards Skye – _Daisy?_

"It's okay, Allie. I promise, you're still safe."

Allie kept her eyes on Skye/Daisy, but she pulsed towards the tablet. **Who's Daisy?**

The shorter-haired woman smiled. "I am. It's… a recent thing. People are still having trouble with it."

Allie flicked her fingers towards her shoulders. **Where's Patrick?**

Bobbi and Daisy exchanged a glance. "We don't know," Daisy said at last. "He hasn't gotten in touch with us."

Allie sent a pulse out into the system, scanning every connected machine on the SHIELD network for any information on Patrick. She was still able to ask her next question, indigo helixes branching off her main consciousness stream and out into the tablet's text program. **How long?**

"How long were you out?" Bobbi asked.

Again she and Daisy exchanged a look.

"Six months," Daisy said eventually.

Tears flooded Allie's eyes and she felt her chest tighten. **Oh God**.

"It's okay," Bobbi said, holding one hand out, trying to calm Allie. "We took care of you."

 **I'm not your responsibility! Where is my brother?**

Information flooded back into her body and Allie gasped as ones and zeroes delivered their message – a strange man was breaking into secure places, demanding information on his sister. She tracked the reports: Baltimore, San Francisco, New York City, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Dallas, Chicago. No information on the last place he'd been seen. He hadn't been on the grid for months.

Hope died in Allie's heart.

 **He's not coming back, is he?**

"We don't know," Daisy said gently. "We're trying to find him."

 **But you're not.**

"No," Daisy agreed. "We haven't found him yet."

Allie squeezed her eyes shut. Hot tears leaked onto her cheeks.

"Hey, slow down," Daisy said. "Let's take care of some basic things first. We're going to do a full medical check – make sure you're breathing okay before we disconnect you from the ventilator, make sure you're not dehydrated or in pain. Bobbi will do some stretches with you. We've been turning you and repositioning your body, but I'm sure you'll still be stiff. After that, a shower. Some new clothes."

 **No! I have to find Patrick!**

"Allie," Bobbi said, quietly but firmly, "you have to take care of yourself before you can help us find Patrick. You've been away from the world for quite a while and you need to replenish your energy before you can…"

Allie pulsed energy towards whatever she could, and the closest thing happened to be the lights in the hallway. They shattered in a blaze of glass and flash, and she felt nothing but pure pride resonate in her chest when Bobbi jerked forward, startled.

Daisy, completely unfazed, knelt down next to the bed. "I don't want to sedate you, Allie," she said. "You don't deserve that. You deserve to help us find Patrick, and we want nothing more than to have you on the case. But think logically – what does your mouth taste like? Do you feel grubby? How long has the ventilator mask been over your face? Let's make sure you're at your peak performance level before we set you loose on the world."

Allie felt suddenly exhausted, her body heavy like sacks of cement. All she wanted was to go back to a home that no longer existed. The little turquoise temple she'd shared with Patrick was heavy in her mind, and if they'd had anything electronic in there she'd tunnel her way in there and never leave.

 _Wait_.

She blinked up at Daisy. **My computer. Is it here?**

Daisy nodded. "Somewhere. If you agree to the medical check and a shower and everything we mentioned, I'll find it for you."

Allie considered this. **You've changed.**

Daisy smiled. "Whole world's changed, internet in a bottle. Nothing sits still… except for maybe you."

Allie smiled at that. Daisy might have changed her name and her haircut, but she was still the caring, funny young woman who had comforted Allie when she woke up in a strange place – twice, now.

 **Okay. Do your worst, earthquake girl.**

* * *

Daisy didn't have a chance to ask Allie how she knew about her earthquake powers before the medical staff came in and began their assessment of the tiny girl. She'd never shown Allie her gift, never used it around her.

Then she realized, like an idiot who forgot she was a hacker, that all of the information about her was still in the SHIELD system. The Index was still there. Allie knew more about Inhumans than Daisy did, having spent her entire life in Afterlife, but now Allie _definitely_ knew everything about gifted people, enhanced people… whatever they were calling them these days.

Allie probably knew everything SHIELD had on everyone. That _any_ network had on _anyone_.

It was a little frightening.

Coulson met her at the base of the stairs, and they began walking back towards the sector of containment pods. "I hear she's awake."

"She is," Daisy replied. "How's Stochnik?"

"Still sweaty. I feel like he might have some glandular condition."

"I'll mention it to the dragon lady when we see her again. I bet the ATCU has pretty comprehensive medical care for their agents."

"Speaking of medical care," Coulson said.

"Nice segue, Phil."

"… how is our guest?"

"She's shaken," Daisy said. "She's upset that her shut-down lasted six months. She's embarrassed that we had to take care of her for that long."

"What else did she think we were going to do?"

Daisy shrugged. "She knows she needs others to take care of her. She just doesn't like it."

"Sounds like someone I know."

"And she's irritated that we haven't found her brother. Or, more technically, that he hasn't come back for her yet."

"We can't do anything about that."

"I know. That doesn't make her any less irritated."

"Where is she now?"

"Being checked over by the med team, and then on her way for a shower and some other self-care stuff."

Coulson looked seriously at Daisy. "You know we have to send her through the Indexing protocol."

Daisy sighed. "I know. I was hoping to avoid that."

"Me too," Coulson said. "But it doesn't work that way, even though she's so fragile and… physically impaired. We need to know about her abilities, about what she's capable of. Her brother seemed to think she was extremely powerful, and other than destroying some computer equipment…"

"And some lights."

"And some… what? When? It doesn't matter, well, okay, she's not the first one to do that around here… she hasn't shown us any of that power."

Daisy held up the tablet. "She seemed to be able to get into the network just fine."

"Isn't that…"

Daisy nodded. "The only thing on this tablet is the text-to-speech generator. It's locked out of the network and the network was just upgraded. The firewall alone took me twelve days. And three migraines and two bags of Cheetos. But she somehow knew about her brother and what he's been up to, and something tells me that wasn't luck or coincidence, and I really hope it wasn't mind-reading."

Coulson's expression became even more serious. "So she's a security threat."

"Aren't we all, at one point or another?"

"It's not the time to be getting philosophical. She could give our position away to… to anyone."

"I don't think she would."

"Powers don't always care about intent."

Daisy had to admit he was right. "So what's the plan?"

"We Index her the old-fashioned way. Pen and paper. Basic instruments. And then we lock her down into a Faraday cage room, so she can't get out."

"How is she supposed to communicate?"

Coulson held up one of Allie's binders. "Her brother says she'll communicate by spelling out words with her eyes. Her conversation partner goes through the alphabet and whenever she wants a letter she raises her eyebrows."

"Do you know how much it's going to infuriate her to have to communicate that way? This is a girl who has the entire world in the palm of her hand at any moment. She could shut down the US government or the entire American power grid if she wanted," Daisy said, anger tinging her voice. "She could have taken Ultron out. By herself. From the moment of his creation."

That stopped Coulson dead in his tracks.

"Yeah, I'm serious," Daisy said.

"Then she's even more dangerous than I thought."

"Ultron was the bad guy, if you'll recall."

"I'm perfectly aware of that. But if _you_ recall – he built several thousand copies of himself. It took the _entire_ Avengers team to bring him down, plus the two enhanced. He shook up every security protocol Stark Industries had in place, planned to destroy Sokovia, and damn near would have gotten away with it if we hadn't had the helicarrier in place."

He turned to face Daisy. "And you're telling me that this… this _girl_ , this _child_ , could have brought him down without a single person dying, without any property damage or personal trauma, without Pietro Maximoff's death, without _any_ of that, Daisy – then she is more powerful than anyone in this room. Than anyone on this base. And she's trapped in a body she can't move, she's angry and resentful, and she's completely alone in the world. If that's not enough to make someone desperate enough to hurt everyone around her, I don't know what is."

Coulson started to walk away. Daisy's voice stopped him.

"And if the ATCU gets their hands on her, I will personally quake out every single one of them."

Coulson didn't turn around. "That sounds like a threat, Agent Johnson."

"It's not a threat, Director. It's a promise."

* * *

The shower was warm and the SHIELD agent bathing her, to her credit, said absolutely nothing about Allie's grotesque body, about the little port of a feeding tube on her belly, about the knots in her hair, about the strange patches of what looked like lint in the bends of her elbows and between her fingers and, presumably, behind her knees and in the creases at her hips where her legs frogged up towards her torso. Instead the agent kept up a steady stream of chatter throughout the entire procedure, telling Allie absolutely nothing.

"… and it was Agent Koenig's birthday last week, so he and his brothers went to an amusement park just outside of town. Billy loves the Tilt-a-Whirl and Sam's really into funnel cake and apparently they met up with Gary and Jack and Paul and started a fight with some clowns…"

After the shower Allie was carried into another room, homey and soft and welcoming. She registered but didn't process the fact that the door slid shut with a soft _whir_ and a slightly louder sealing noise. A young woman was there, dressed in loose clothing, her hair pulled back into a short ponytail. She looked nervous and somewhat disconnected, but she smiled at Allie nonetheless. "I thought I might help you be a bit more comfortable. Get you dressed, brush your hair, cut your nails – that sort of thing. If that'd be all right."

Allie just blinked at her.

"Oh, dear. I'm so sorry. I forgot… I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Agent Simmons. Jemma. Jemma Simmons. But you can call me whatever you'd like."

 _Simmons._ Allie mentally ticked back through the information she'd pulled off the SHIELD mainframe. _Jemma Simmons. Was sucked into the Monolith. Went to an alien planet. Came back different. Scared. Uncertain._

"Um, is that all right? Look up for yes, look down for no."

Allie looked up. [Yes.]

Jemma carefully manipulated Allie's limbs into a pair of soft cotton pajamas, sliding similarly soft socks up onto the girl's contracted feet. She didn't speak until she was coming out Allie's hair. "I don't know if you remember," she said gently, "but I was the one who found you. Agent Coulson and I were the ones who came to get you after you sent out your distress signal."

 _The airplane_.

"You were very brave," Jemma went on. "To be all by yourself when the world was falling down around you…"

 _You were alone too_ , Allie mused.

"And I'm so glad you're awake now. We've never properly met."

Jemma took her time combing out Allie's long hair, slowly but confidently. Allie liked the way Jemma wasn't afraid to touch her, wasn't afraid to turn her head one way or another or to carefully pick up her head to assure that all of the Allie's hair was combed. When that task was complete, Jemma retrieved a set of nail clippers and sat next to the bed. "Is it all right if I ask you some questions?"

[Yes], Allie signaled. She was feeling drowsy.

"Were you born this way?"

[No.]

"Did it happen… when you transitioned?"

[Yes.]

"Were you quite young?"

[Yes.]

"Younger than ten?"

[Yes.]

"Younger than five?"

[No.]

"Five?"

[Yes.]

Jemma nodded, taking that in as she carefully clipped Allie's nails. "That makes you the youngest person we've ever known to go through Terrigenesis."

[Yes.]

"Did you know that?"

[Yes.]

"I am so sorry," Jemma said softly. "It must have been terrifying."

[Yes.]

"I don't claim to know much about Inhumans, or much of anything these days, really, but I'm sure that if you transitioned that young, there must have been a good reason."

 _I was a pawn_ , Allie thought. _My mother wanted one thing, my father wanted another, Jiaying wanted something completely different and whatever she said was law. It drove my father away, it drove my mother out of her mind, it cost me my family. I'm completely alone at the mercy of a secret government organization, surrounded by strangers, in a mangled body. It doesn't matter how old I was – it was the wrong decision for everyone involved._

Jemma watched as Allie's facial muscles were caught up in a spasm. "I don't know if anyone told you," she said, trying to keep her voice steady, "but Jiaying is dead."

 _Jiaying can't die_ , Allie thought idiotically, stunned by the news. _She takes and she takes and…_

"She can't hurt you anymore."

 _She already took everything from me. Her being dead means nothing. She's going to hurt me for the rest of my probably pathetically short life, whether she's dead or not._

"Now, I've finished with your little grooming tasks, and Director Coulson and Skye… _Daisy_ … will be coming in to talk to you," Jemma said. She stood and hesitated, then gently let her fingers wrap around Allie's. "You're safe here, I promise."

 _I might be safe,_ Allie thought, _but you're definitely not_.

* * *

Daisy and a man with one hand were the next visitors to enter Allie's little room. The man's hand was a fairly advanced prosthetic, and Allie wondered idly if she could control it, make it tickle others or pinch their noses, but she didn't have the energy to do so. She felt bizarre, drowsy and tense and nauseous all at once; she didn't want to fight against her body any longer.

"Hi, Allie," Daisy said, sitting down next to the bed. The man sat down, too, studying her. Allie was used to such visual scrutiny, but it didn't mean she liked it. "This is Director Coulson."

"Hello, Aliselyn," Coulson said. "It's nice to meet you. I was with Agent Simmons when we evacuated you from Afterlife, but it's all right if you don't remember that. Your brother left us some fairly detailed instructions on your care, and he mentioned that he calls you 'Lis' but everyone else calls you 'Allie.' Would you like to be called Allie while you're here?"

"Eyes up is yes, eyes down is no," Daisy whispered to the one-handed man.

[Yes.]

"Okay," Coulson said.

He seemed uncomfortable about something, and Daisy turned to look at him, seemingly giving him silent encouragement. "I know you've been in our network, Allie, and so I'm sure you've discovered our Index."

 _Gifted people_.

[Yes.]

"And you've probably discovered there's a process for the intake of gifted people."

[Yes.]

"We'd like to put you through that process," Coulson went on. "It sounds like a serious undertaking, and it is. But it's for your safety."

 _I'm already safe_ , Allie thought. _Everyone keeps telling me that._

Daisy gave Coulson a sharp glance.

"And for our safety," he allowed.

 _You're scared_.

"Daisy let me know about your gifts, what you might potentially be capable of," Coulson said. "We're very concerned about our security here at the Playground – we need SHIELD's base to remain locked down and hidden from anyone who might try to take us down."

 _HYDRA_ _took you down once_ , Allie mused. _You don't want them to try again. And now… now there's something else, too._

"So while we put you through the Indexing process, we're going to keep you here in this room. It's built so we can accommodate your medical needs, but also…"

He trailed off, and Allie frowned at him.

"We're cutting you off from the network," Daisy said bluntly, obviously tired of Coulson's pussyfooting around. Then her tone softened. "Just until you've finished being Indexed."

A spurt of anger pushed its way through Allie's body, and she fought through the nausea and dizziness creeping up on her in order to pulse energy at anything in range.

Her power, her gift, her invisible helixes – they slammed into something hard and unyielding. Allie let out a pained cry. _I'm trapped!_

"The room is a modified Faraday cage," Coulson said. "Nothing in here is run by anything with a 'brain.'"

Allie _pushed_ again and the cage around her shoved the energy right back at her. It jolted into her body like an electrical shock and she cried out again, this time in true pain and agony. Now she understood why she felt so confused and nauseous – it was as though they'd cut off a part of her. Lobotomized her. Taken away the one thing that made her a person.

 _I have nothing left_ , she thought, heartbroken. _I'm alone in here now._

"We know you can use the alphabet to communicate," Coulson continued. "We'd prefer if you'd use that method until we assess your gifts."

Enraged, Allie screamed. It wasn't loud, it wasn't powerful, it wasn't strong enough to convey her rage, but it was all she had.

Daisy knelt by the side of the bed. Allie flicked her eyes towards the Inhuman, pleading. _Don't you know what it's like? You_ _do_ _, I can see it in your eyes. You were locked up once too. Please,_ _please_ _don't let them do this to me._

"I'm so sorry," Daisy whispered, stroking Allie's hair. "I tried to tell him."

 _Please_.

"You won't be alone," Daisy said. "I promise. And I'm working on a way for you to communicate faster that won't need the network. It's just… eBay shipping is sometimes unreliable."

Allie furrowed her brow at that. _eBay?_

"Trust me," Daisy said, firmly but softly, and in that moment, though she still felt like some part of her was dying, turning into gray and dust, cut off from everything else, Allie did.

* * *

"We shouldn't have done that," Daisy said flatly.

Coulson kept walking.

"She's terrified, Coulson."

The director stopped and turned to face her. "No," he said. "She's angry."

"Anger masks fear."

"In this case, anger masks all of the things she wants to do to us."

"When did you stop trusting me?"

"I've never stopped…"

"Then why is she locked up, cut off from the one thing she _can_ control? You know this is only going to make her worse."

"Worse than what she is?"

"So much worse," Daisy retorted. "What my mother and the rest of the Inhumans didn't take from this girl, _we_ did. _You_ did. She's floating, untethered, in a black hole. We might just kill her now, for all the good this is going to do to her."

"Let's not be dramatic, Agent Johnson."

Daisy shook her head. "You're wrong about her, Coulson. You were wrong about me once, too."

"You earned my trust."

"We could have done something less invasive. Put the bracelet on her…"

"You don't think she would have hacked it off within a minute? If it even took her that long?"

Daisy threw up her hands in frustration. "You're no better than Price and the ATCU – locking her away, caging her up and…"

" _I am NOT the ATCU_ ," Coulson barked at her. "Don't you _ever_ …"

He cut himself off, and when he spoke again his voice was lower, calmer. "Please don't ever suggest that my goals and the goals of the ATCU are the same."

Daisy shrugged. "Please don't ever suggest that SHIELD's goals and mine are the same."

Coulson met her eyes and saw nothing but firm resolve. "I won't," he said.

Daisy bit her lip, nodding. "Fine," she said, and she turned on her heel, moving back towards the pod where Allie was lying, separated from the one thing that would have brought her closer to everything around her, drifting in a world she no longer had the context to explain.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** One more week to go on NaNoWriMo! Coming up next from me - the next chapter of "unspeakable" and the fourth installment in my Skye/Natasha series.

Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/follows/favorites. It means so much to me.

I'm memorysdaughter on Tumblr, where you're welcome to come visit me, though I've been neglecting it somewhat these past few days because I finally got Netflix and now I can't stop watching "Jessica Jones."

Enjoy!

* * *

Daisy slipped away from the pod to get dinner, and hopefully to find Lincoln. She was worried about Allie. Since her arrival into the Faraday cage, Allie's condition had decreased sharply. Daisy sat next to her, talking about nothing and everything, asking questions about Patrick and things Allie liked and didn't like, but after twenty minutes or so Allie's eyes drifted away from Daisy to the window in the pod, and it became clear Allie wasn't seeing anything in the room. Glassy-eyed and disconnected, Allie merely breathed, occasionally moving her finger against her shoulder. Then her eyes closed and the monitor attached to her wrist indicated she was breathing shallowly, though whether from exhaustion or desperation Daisy had no idea. In any case, Daisy set up the ventilator and slipped the mask over Allie's face.

She watched Allie for a few more minutes. Convinced the girl wasn't going to do anything, Daisy moved out into the hallway.

Bobbi was in the corridor, leaning against the wall in a way meant to suggest that she wasn't standing there for any particular purpose. Instead of looking relaxed, though, Bobbi's expression was one of tense preoccupation.

"Fight with Hunter?" Daisy asked, only half-kidding.

"Your girl," Bobbi replied.

For a moment Daisy had no idea what that meant. _Your girl._

"You mean Allie?"

"She is yours, isn't she?"

"She's not a pet."

"That isn't what I meant. Daisy, I see the way you look at her. She lost nearly as much in the war against the Inhumans as you did," Bobbi said carefully. "You've been looking for Inhumans and trying to keep them safe for months now. You've made some sacrifices to work with Coulson and the ATCU, and now that Allie's awake you're trying to find answers for both of you."

"There are no answers for her," Daisy replied. "And with her locked in that Faraday cage we're not going to get answers _from_ her, either."

Then she remembered something Allie had asked about earlier.

"Hey, where did we put her stuff? Her luggage from Afterlife?"

Bobbi thought about this. "Six months ago if you'd asked me, I would've known. Now… no clue. Mack or one of the Koenigs might know."

"I'll ask them," Daisy said. "Thanks. Hey, have you seen Lincoln?"

Bobbi shook her head. "No, and the last time I saw him he was looking awfully squirrely. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd taken off on one of his jaunts again."

Daisy sighed. The issues between her and Lincoln, and Lincoln and the rest of SHIELD, were enough to rival the entire publishing history of _National Geographic_.

"I'll talk to Mack," Bobbi said. "Ask him if he knows where Allie's luggage ended up. Go get something to eat."

Daisy found her way to the kitchen and heated up a plate of leftovers, which she ate standing up in front of the refrigerator, deliberately thinking about nothing. And everything.

And Patrick Shinn, looking for his sister, somehow getting in and out of the places he was looking without being seen by anyone. Why those places? How was he doing it?

And Allie's eyes, first terrified and now disconnected, betraying her anger at SHIELD, at the whole situation. What was she after? How powerful was she, really?

Coulson. The ATCU. Price. Unknown numbers of Inhumans in stasis in some facility. Jemma.

Daisy sighed and rinsed her plate, putting it in the dishwasher. On her way out of the kitchen Lincoln broadsided her, nearly knocking her to the floor.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, and she thought he was about to apologize for running into her. Instead, the first words out of his mouth were "When were you going to tell me?"

"About…?"

"About your new prisoner!"

Daisy thought about this. "We don't have…"

"Why would you bring her here?"

"Who?"

"Don't act like you don't know! That girl…"

"Allie? You're talking about Allie?"

Lincoln's face was serious. "You have to get her out of here."

"Lincoln, I can't. She's alone in the world, she doesn't have anywhere else to go, and she's absolutely helpless."

Lincoln barked out a hard, sarcastic laugh. "Helpless? _Helpless?_ Are we talking about the same girl?"

"I don't know," Daisy said slowly, "since you seem to be under the impression she's someone else."

"Nothing good has _ever_ come from any interaction with that girl."

"Do you think it might be because she was sent through the Mist at age five, and shortly thereafter lost the majority of her physical capabilities?"

"No," Lincoln said shortly, shaking his head. "I think it's because of who she is, and what she does."

"Enlighten me, please."

He shook his head again. "Wherever she goes, people die."

It wasn't quite the same as _where she goes, death follows_ but it was close enough. Daisy froze. "What do you mean?" she asked, her voice low and deadly.

"It doesn't get much simpler than that," Lincoln said.

"She kills people?"

He rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. She's not even able to move on her own, let alone kill people."

"It doesn't stop her from flooding her way into a network and blowing out lights and computers," Daisy pointed out.

"It's not her," Lincoln said.

"So…"

"It's her brother."

"He's not here, Lincoln."

"I know, otherwise you'd all be running for your lives."

Fear formed a small ball in the pit of Daisy's stomach. "What? Why?"

Lincoln's eyes shifted. "It doesn't matter. He won't find her here."

"That doesn't mean he's not out there looking for her, and that doesn't mean he won't run into us," Daisy pointed out. "It might be worth looking into. She seems pretty attached to him, and pretty upset he hasn't found her yet."

"Upset? No. She's not upset he hasn't found her. She's relieved."

Lincoln strode past her into the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" Daisy asked.

"If you're going to hear this story, you're going to want a drink."

* * *

"I understand you've captured a new Inhuman, Phil." Rosalind Price was, as always, the master of understated overstatements, and Coulson wasn't quite sure how to even wrap his head around most of the things she said.

"We haven't captured anyone," he said.

"That's not what Stochnik reports."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about Stochnik. He's really sweaty, and I'm worried it might be some sort of…"

"Phil."

Coulson sighed. "This particular Inhuman was rescued from Afterlife as it fell. She did not become an Inhuman in this latest wave; she's been one for eleven years, and she came to us more than six months ago."

"Why am I just hearing about her now?"

"Well, for one, it's none of your business. And for another…"

"Is she one of Daisy's friends?"

"No."

"I find that hard to believe."

"I feel like that's more of a personal problem."

"And is she being assessed?"

"Of course she is."

"Hmm. I'd still like some of my people there to observe the process, make sure all of our bases are covered."

Coulson shifted his weight. "She's not one of the Inhumans you're looking for, Ms. Price. She's wholly a SHIELD concern."

Price made a dismissive noise. "I think I should be the judge of that."

"Judge away," Coulson said.

"My team and I will be there in a few hours," Price said. "Tell me, Director Coulson – what do you know of her abilities?"

Coulson took a few steps forward to look in at Allie, the tiny crumpled girl swaddled in a lavender blanket, ventilator mask over her face, eyes tightly closed. "Not very much," he admitted.

"So you have no idea what she might be capable of?"

"No," Coulson said.

"I don't have to tell you to keep your guard up."

 _She's just a little girl_ , Coulson thought, watching as one of Allie's pointer fingers swayed, as though she was moving it to conduct an orchestra in her dreams. It saddened him to know she was using the entirety of her body's physical capabilities just then.

"Phil?"

"The guard is always up, Ms. Price."

 _But who it's for, I can't always be sure._

* * *

A junior officer approached Daisy and handed her two packets. Daisy thanked him and then followed Lincoln into the kitchen. He held a bottle of beer in her direction, but she shook her head. "No, thanks. I feel like I'm going to need my wits about me."

"You know it's really, _really_ difficult for Inhumans to get drunk, right?"

"Save the sweet talk for the second date," Daisy said. She sat down at the table and slit open the first packet. Out came a small metal plate, the size of a thumb, and a coil of wires attached to it.

"What's that?"

"Never mind what that is," Daisy replied. "Start talking."

"The whole Shinn family… they're legends," Lincoln said. He perched on the table and sipped at his beer. "Descended from a long line of Inhumans… one of the only families in the community where both parents could trace their lineages back to Inhumans. Usually there's some sort of split, where one partner or another, one great-aunt or great-great-grandfather or something was human, but not with the Shinns."

"I know about the brother," Daisy said. "But the notes he left with Allie said he's not Inhuman."

Lincoln laughed. "Yeah, right. I just told you – a long line of Inhumans. There's no way in hell, or any other horrible place, that Patrick Shinn is anything _but_ Inhuman."

"Why would he lie to us?"

"Well, he wasn't technically lying to _you_ ," Lincoln pointed out. "He was lying to whoever he thought would find Allie. He didn't know it would be SHIELD, or that Allie would end up with Jiaying's daughter."

Daisy set down the plate and the wires, putting them next to the slightly larger box she'd also received. "Did you know them… before?"

Lincoln nodded. "Of course I did. Everyone knows everyone up there."

"When I was there, why didn't I see Patrick or Allie?"

"Because they didn't live with the rest of us."

"Or their mother?"

"Jiaying made sure you saw only what she wanted you to see, and there was no reason for you to see Marianna Shinn. That woman has been beaten down so far by life and everything around her, and Jiaying knew it would ruin her image of a happy colony of Inhumans."

"You have to stop talking in riddles."

"You said you read Patrick's notes. Did they tell you what happened to Allie?"

"No. Not directly."

"Okay," Lincoln said. "Then that's where we'll start."

* * *

"I'm not going through that girl's luggage," Mack said.

Bobbi pushed the button to start his espresso machine. "It's not like you're a valet or anything."

"That is not what I mean," Mack said. He put down a wrench and wiped his hands on a rag as he approached Bobbi. "Need I remind you what happened to Dr. Garner when he dealt with something from Afterlife?"

The mere mention of Andrew Garner's unfortunate transformation was enough to silence Bobbi.

"Get Daisy to do it," Mack suggested. "All the bags are in the containment room where she was during the first part of her stay here."

"Daisy's talking to Lincoln."

"They could both do it. Or neither of them could," Mack said.

Bobbi looked over at him.

"I've just been thinking," Mack said. "What's the endgame here, for this girl?"

"What do you mean?"

Mack shook his head. "Never mind."

"No, keep going."

Mack sighed. "It's just… we know nothing about her except what's written in those notebooks, and that's not a hell of a lot. She's basically a statue, locked into her own head. We've got no idea about her powers, no idea what she could do to us…"

"Or _with_ us," Bobbi pointed out. "Not everyone is against us."

"She's going to be a permanent fixture at SHIELD," Mack said. "Unless something else happens. She's got no one left, they left her there to die, and we still have no information about her."

"She's being put on the Index," Bobbi said. "We'll figure things out. She _can_ communicate. She'll tell us. And I'm sure Lincoln has information about her."

"With the ATCU watching us, it's just hard to justify another Inhuman here," Mack said. "Not that I want them to take her – we saw what they're willing to do – but I feel like we're always one step behind them, and it's not a feeling I enjoy."

"Me neither," Bobbi said.

The espresso machine beeped and Bobbi moved towards it, pushing another button to dispense the coffee into a small cup. "Need any help with that?"

"With Agent Bund's desk chair? No, I think I've got it."

* * *

"Once upon a time," Lincoln said, as though he was telling a fairy tale. Then he got a bit more realistic: "Well, not so long ago, this is how things were…"

Children at Afterlife were assessed for their potential to go through the Mist quite young. The Elders would weigh the facts and select dates for each confirmed passage. Those who were not chosen or whose transition would be "deferred" did not have a date set. For the majority of those chosen, their transitions would occur between their thirteenth and eighteenth birthdays – long enough for them to learn about what would happen, the history behind it all, and the process afterwards. The Elders were firm about that: Afterlife's children needed to know as much as possible about the biggest change in their entire lives.

Lincoln didn't know how the children were assessed. He'd never seen the process. But he did know that the Elders had never selected a child as young as Allie to transition. She was five years old when the Elders were moved to send her through the Mist. It was a controversial decision.

"Her brother was denied the chance to go through," Lincoln said. "The Elders felt there was something coming in his future that would hinder his chances of success. But for some reason they rushed Allie."

Allie begged and pleaded not to go through. She screamed and clawed at anyone who took her into the temple where the transition was to occur. She kept repeating that something bad was going to happen, and that she needed to go home. She sobbed and beat her head against the floor and made herself sick.

"It must have been difficult for Jiaying to go through with it," Lincoln said, "but she had no choice. The Elders were watching, and their charts and plans pointed to Allie's transition happening that day."

"And up until then, Allie was…"

"She was normal. I've seen pictures. A normal little girl, gap-toothed and goofy, who would chase rabbits and spend lots of time trying to get out of schoolwork. She loved Afterlife. She was so happy there."

At last Jiaying managed to pin the girl down and shattered the crystal. Allie dropped to the ground like she'd been shot. The chrysalis formed around her fallen body, and Jiaying could hear the tiny girl gasping and choking inside. When Allie lay motionless in the chrysalis, unable to break herself free, Jiaying was forced to do something she'd _never_ done – break someone from their chrysalis.

"I had access to the medical records," Lincoln said quietly. "The transition nearly killed Allie. The Mist changed her DNA, but at the moment she breathed it in, all of her major muscle groups began to deteriorate rapidly. She was unable to breathe on her own, unable to hold herself upright – and that was just the beginning."

"Has this ever happened before?"

"They call it 'the one in a million,'" Lincoln told Daisy. "In an astronomically small number of Inhumans, the transition causes serious mental or physical disability. At Afterlife there were two – Allie, and a man called Charles. Since we've been out here, I haven't seen, met, or heard of any, and I'm pretty sure it's because either they died during transition or the ATCU got to them."

Allie's parents had a complicated relationship with Afterlife. Allie's mother, Marianna, was a long-term resident of Afterlife. Allie's father, Laojzek, had only lived there since shortly before Patrick's birth. He didn't like living at Afterlife but he'd made the best of it, and truthfully, all he cared about was remaining with Marianna and the children.

"None of this tells me anything about Patrick," Daisy said.

"I'm getting there."

"Can you get there faster? I feel like I'm watching a soap opera. _Days of our Inhuman Lives."_

"If only it was that interesting. Or benign. After Allie's botched transformation, for lack of a better word, Laojzek was furious. He went after Jiaying."

Daisy tapped her fingers against the table. She wasn't sure if Lincoln noticed his beer wobbling, or the distinct chatter of the small metal plate as it _tick-tick-tick_ ed beside her elbow. She forced herself to stop.

"Jiaying threw him out of Afterlife and made Marianna's life a living hell," Lincoln went on. "She tore their family apart."

The Elders were worried about Patrick, so Jiaying had him sent to an Inhuman family who lived on the outside. Patrick came back two years later scrawny and paranoid and beaten into submission.

"At least, that was the image he projected," Lincoln said. "We didn't find out until much later that he went through the Mist and transitioned during those two years."

"God, Lincoln, just get to the point," Daisy said. She was feeling distinctly nervous now, and wanted to bolt out of the kitchen and back to Allie's pod. Something was brewing at the base of her neck, and she didn't like it.

"Patrick… he came back different. Overly protective. Devoted. Quiet. He only cared about Allie."

"She's his sister, and she'd been through hell, according to you. Why is this suspicious?"

"Because of what he started to do to everyone who came near her. He would convince them they didn't need to see her. And I don't just mean he'd say 'oh, she's busy' or 'oh, she's not feeling well' and send them away. He told them to do things, and they did them."

"I'm guessing this is serious."

Lincoln nodded. "It was… more than suggestibility. It was control."

"So he can control people," Daisy said. "So why hasn't he used it to find Allie?"

"I have no idea. He could be in here right now, but he's not. He's waiting for something."

"Something we have? Besides Allie?"

"Could be."

"Any way to trace this guy?"

"If Patrick doesn't want to be found, he's not going to let you find him."

"Where's Marianna Shinn right now?"

"It's hard to say. Gordon took everyone out of Afterlife who wasn't going to be useful to Jiaying's plans."

"Where did he take them?"

Lincoln shrugged. "There's a couple of places. I can start putting out feelers."

He stood up, taking a long drink of his beer.

"Lincoln," Daisy said slowly, "what are the odds Patrick could influence Jiaying? I mean, you said Jiaying made his mother's life very difficult… did Patrick do that?"

"No," Lincoln said, his tone firm. "Marianna had something Jiaying wanted, and Marianna wouldn't give it to her. So Jiaying held Allie's life in the balance – if Marianna screwed up, Allie went without food or medical care. Marianna learned to toe the line, but Jiaying never got what she wanted."

"And Allie's relieved he isn't here?"

"He could tell anyone… to do anything… and they'd comply. My guess is… Allie knows what Marianna has, and either Allie has it, knows where it is, or knows what its value is. And Patrick's going to get it out of her."

"And do what with it?"

"I don't know. I don't know what it is. But I saw Patrick tell a grown man to beat his own hand with a meat mallet because that man had the gall to get breakfast before Patrick. After that… after that Jiaying forced Patrick out of the main compound. And he took Allie with him."

Daisy rubbed her forehead. "God, this just keeps getting better."

"Tremors," Mack called from the hallway. "Coulson's dragon lady's here."

"I really have to learn to shut up," Daisy muttered.

* * *

"Allie," Daisy whispered, kneeling next to the bed. "I need you to wake up."

She shook the tiny girl gently. "Sweetheart, there's some people coming to talk to you. I tried to stop them, but… they're insistent."

Allie's eyes opened and she looked at Daisy. Her expression was unreadable.

"Can I take the ventilator off?"

[No.]

"Okay." Daisy took that in stride. "I have something here for you to help you communicate. It's faster than the eye-blink alphabet but still slower than you're used to."

She showed Allie the rig she'd created, a keyboard stretched out into one line of letters attached to the printer mechanism from an adding machine, hooked to an extremely sensitive switch Allie could activate with her slight pointer finger movement. The switch would slide back and forth along the letters at Allie's movements, and a second tap on the switch printed the desired letter on a string of white paper fed through from a fat roll hung on one side of the device.

"I'm sorry it's not something better, but it's just until you're finished being Indexed." Daisy stroked Allie's hair. "Is it all right if those people come in now?"

Allie's deep gaze held on Daisy's face and didn't waver. It seemed to say _I don't have a choice, do I?_

"No, darling, you don't have a choice," Daisy said softly. "Can they come in?"

[Yes.]

Daisy stood and opened the door to the pod. "Rosalind Price, Allie Shinn. Allie Shinn, Rosalind Price."

* * *

Allie looked up at the woman. Business suit, no-nonsense haircut, the sound of high heels on the floor. She was accompanied by three men in tactical gear. Allie knew she should have been scared, but instead she was just enraged.

"Nice to meet you," the woman said. "As Daisy said, I'm Rosalind Price."

Daisy busied herself setting up the communication device, putting it on an adjustable table so Allie could see the letters and attaching the switch to a brace she wrapped gently around Allie's wrist, putting the switch in reach of Allie's finger.

"I see that you're… acclimating well to SHIELD. How did you get here?" Rosalind asked.

One of her men brought a chair over, and she sat, crossing her ankles.

Allie flicked her gaze over to Daisy.

Daisy shrugged.

Allie began to move her pointer finger, spelling out her answer. P-L-A-N-E.

Daisy snorted and tried to hide it.

"I see," Rosalind said. "And what is your purpose, exactly, for being here?"

 _God, I hate you_ , Allie thought. T-A-K-E. A. N-A-P.

Rosalind looked over at Daisy. "Is she serious?"

"I'm not in her head," Daisy said, "so I have no idea. You asked a question and she answered."

Rosalind turned back to Allie. "We're looking for people who were involved in the Inhuman outbreak. Were you possibly involved?"

Daisy looked like she wanted to punch Rosalind, and Allie completely agreed. W-A-S. R-I-N-G-L-E-A-D-E-R.

"If she's not going to cooperate we'll have to resort to other methods," Rosalind said.

"She's not a prisoner," Daisy pointed out, "and most importantly, she's not _your_ subject at all. Ms. Shinn has no reason to comply with anything you're asking."

"Well, good," Rosalind said, her tone acid. "Because so far, that's all she's done."

The boiling rage that built in Allie's chest spilled out into her arms, and she wished, not for the first time, that she could use that rage to get up and cause hell. Instead she was trapped, trapped with only a modified communication device in a room with four strangers and Daisy.

 _Daisy hasn't lied to you yet_ , Allie forced herself to remember. _Daisy's done everything she can to make you feel safe, and like everything's going to work out._

"She's no better than any of them," Rosalind said. "Thinks this is a game. People are getting hurt."

"Not because of Allie," Daisy said firmly.

"You don't even know what her power is. She could be controlling all of you like puppets and you'd never even know it."

The thought of Allie making anyone a puppet was nearly enough to cause her to vomit. She had to find a way out. She had to make them stop. Energy burst out of Allie, and she was surprised – there was something in the room with a "brain." Several somethings. A phone, and three advanced communication units. It was enough. It would have to be enough.

She sucked in a breath and held it, ignoring the fact that her chest ached, and pushed all of her invisible helixes towards the devices. She surged out into the network, jumping from phone to the SHIELD mainframe to anywhere she wanted to go.

 _Have to show them. Have to get them to stop. Have to stop them before they take me away. Before he can find me…_

Allie flooded into the base controls. The lights, the water, the security cameras, the computers, the connected equipment, the planes – she was everywhere and she wanted all of it.

She _pushed_ herself in and it was only when the lights went out and the weight of the base fell completely on her that she realized it might not have been the best idea.

But by then her body was taken over by all that information and it was too late to think about much else.

* * *

When the lights went out Rosalind jerked up from her seat. Her three associates drew their weapons immediately. "What's going on?" Rosalind asked Daisy.

Daisy went over to the lamp in the corner of the pod and turned it on. Since the base's electrical power ran from a central computerized system, they'd had to put lights in the pod that weren't connected to that system. She grabbed a flashlight from her pocket. "I'm not sure."

She slid the pod door open and saw a bouncing light coming towards her. "Tremors? What's going on?"

"I have no idea," Daisy replied.

Mack stuck his head into the pod. "She okay?"

"She was fine just a few minutes ago."

Mack's phone rang and he answered, spoke a few words, and then held the phone out into the air between him and Daisy. "It's Fitz," he said.

"What's up, Fitz?"

"She got out!"

"Who?"

"Your… your Allie!" Fitz's voice was nearly hysterical. "She shut down the entire base."

"That's impossible. She's in a Faraday cage, we checked all of the equipment in here…"

"The lights and the water are out, all of the computers are down," Fitz said hurriedly. "I'm on my way to check the backup generator and the security systems but I'm pretty sure she got to those too."

"Fitz, it's impossible," Daisy said firmly. "She couldn't…"

She whirled around.

Rosalind and her three agents were still standing there, the men with their guns drawn.

"Did you leave your phone with Coulson?" Daisy asked.

"What?"

"Did you leave your phone with Coulson?" Daisy repeated, her voice getting louder.

"No," Rosalind said. "Of course not."

"You're an idiot!" Daisy strode towards the ATCU leader.

"Tremors," Mack said carefully.

"She let Allie out!"

"Let her… out?" Rosalind looked confused.

Daisy had several not-so-nice words on her lips but a wheeze and a gasp from the bed stopped her immediately. "Shit. Mack, get medical in here."

"What? What's wrong?"

"Get medical in here _now!"_

Daisy ripped the ventilator mask off Allie's face and looked down at the tiny Inhuman girl, now bleeding from her ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. "Shit, Allie," Daisy breathed, and she grabbed the suction machine, using it to clear as much as she could.

Allie didn't move or cry out, didn't even choke. Her body was as tense as a live wire, and Daisy wondered how long Allie's fragile system could hold up something as huge as the base and all of its electronics.

The blood just kept coming and Daisy felt vibrations rising in her sternum and her arms, begging to be let free, growing stronger with the anxiety streaming through her body. She forced them down, continuing to move the suction wand between Allie's nose and mouth, hoping against hope the girl was still breathing.

* * *

 _One more. One more. One more thing with a brain_.

Allie found it – small and round and pulsing – and flooded it with energy. She felt it give way, and she sank back, dropping the network, dropping the base, letting all of it go.

* * *

One of Price's men choked and fell to the floor.

"Barry," one of the other men said. "Barry, report!"

Jemma and the medical team hurried into the pod, and Jemma immediately moved towards Allie.

"Help him," Daisy ordered, indicating Price's fallen agent.

Jemma barked out assignments to the other agents who'd followed her in, and turned back to Allie. "What happened?"

"She…" Daisy couldn't speak; the quake in her arms was too intense.

"Okay," Jemma said gently. "We need to roll her to one side so she doesn't choke on the blood."

Daisy nodded mutely, and carefully helped Jemma move Allie's twisted body.

The girl spluttered and coughed, and blood streamed from her mouth to the pod floor. She choked and gagged and Daisy kept the suction wand moving.

The base lights came back on, followed by the sound of several explosions from farther away. One of the medical team approached Jemma.

Allie's bleeding seemed to be slowing, and Daisy took the opportunity to wipe Allie's eyes and ears. "It's okay," Daisy said quietly. "It's okay."

Allie blinked at her, but it wasn't quite sure what the girl could see or hear. Her eyes were still covered with a scrim of blood, and Allie looked more exhausted than Daisy had seen her. Allie closed her eyes and two drops of blood ran from the corners, looking for all the world like red tears.

"It's okay," Daisy repeated.

She leaned in to stroke Allie's hair, and as she did so, she noticed something strange near Allie's hairline.

 _Code. It's code. It's burned into her skin_.

The burn looked fresh, bright red, and Daisy's heart sank as she realized the cost of Allie's takeover of the base. A quick check found two others – one on Allie's wrist and another across her neck. Code, binary numbers, seared into the girl's skin like a brand. It wasn't good.

Jemma touched Daisy's shoulder. "Price's man… he's dead."

And it just kept getting worse.

"What?" Daisy nearly dropped the suction wand.

"He had a pacemaker," Price said, her voice hard. "He had a pacemaker, and your _freak_ killed him."

She shoved aside her other men. "And now she comes with us."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Bla, bla, been gone awhile. Back in the saddle again. Let's do this.

Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/follows/favorites/messages me. You're amazing.

Enjoy!

* * *

"You can't let them take her!" Daisy yelled at Coulson.

He shut the office door behind them. "Lower your voice."

"So she blew a fuse in that guy's pacemaker! She didn't know he had a pacemaker! And it's _Roz's_ damn fault anyway, bringing her _phone_ in with her!"

She whirled on him, raising an accusing finger in his direction. "And if _you_ hadn't put her in there in the first place…"

Coulson reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Stop," he said, his voice low.

"Why should I?" she demanded.

Coulson indicated the room around them. All of his knickknacks were wobbling and the panes of glass in the windows rattled.

Daisy took a deep breath and forced her heart rate down. The room settled around them. "This isn't over."

"They have an order from the government," Coulson hissed. "And since we're not supposed to exist, I'm pretty sure we're only a few steps away from a locked cell somewhere in Guantanamo."

"Their order couldn't say anything about Allie, since they didn't know who she was before they walked in here."

Coulson handed her a formal-looking piece of paper and watched while she read it. Daisy's face was flushed and there was a vein pulsing at her temple. Her gaze moved down the page; he heard her breathing pick up and saw color drain from her face.

"They can't do this," Daisy whispered, raising her head to look at him.

Her face was terrified.

"I know you're fond of Allie," Coulson tried.

"It has nothing to do with whether I'm 'fond' of her or not," Daisy said. "What they want to do to her, to _all_ Inhumans, is tantamount to torture, and you know it!"

Coulson shook his head.

"Her brother is out there looking for her," Daisy said, her voice low, as she stepped closer to him. "He lied to us."

"We never met him."

"But in his notes he says very firmly that he's not Inhuman. That's not the story I've heard from Lincoln and it doesn't seem to jibe with some of the things Allie told me. She's terrified he'll find her. Here, she's safe. If she leaves here, we can't do anything to protect her."

"It's out of our hands," Coulson said.

"Like hell it is."

"She's not safe here!"

"She was until Rosalind walked in."

" _No_ , Skye," Coulson said.

Daisy jerked her head back towards him.

He flushed. "Daisy. Sorry. But she wasn't safe here before Rosalind showed up. She took out our entire base's systems without so much as breaking a sweat."

"Yeah, and that all worked out great for her, didn't it? The whole bleeding from facial orifices and having computer code burned into one's skin, those are just illusions, things people do when they're having a great time," Daisy scoffed.

"She… she what?"

Daisy let out a shaky breath. "When she lost control, when she… ran out of stamina to hold the entire base by herself, blood just started pouring out of her. Nose, ears, eyes, mouth. It was absolutely terrifying. And right before Jemma told me Price's agent was dead, I saw that Allie had burn marks on her. It's code."

Coulson put his head in his hands. "She's not safe anywhere."

Daisy felt tears build in her eyes and she blinked, hard, to get them to go away. "She was safe at Afterlife, until I ruined all that."

She crumpled Price's executive order of threatening in her hand and bowed her head.

"You didn't ruin anything," Coulson said softly, and he put his arms around her. "You did the very best you could. You tried."

She shook her head against his shoulder. "No. I didn't try hard enough. My parents are gone. Afterlife is destroyed. Allie's entire life is rubble. Not to mention all of the Inhumans killed by Lash or the ones displaced by us. It all comes back to _me_."

Daisy sighed. "Just let me get this one right, Coulson."

* * *

"Allie."

The voice was soft.

God, her head hurt.

"Allie, it's Daisy. The woman who was here before, Rosalind Price? She's… um… she's got some paperwork from the government…"

Allie tried to open her eyes. Daisy appeared as a blurry dark shape before her, slightly tinted red.

"… and legally we have to put you into her custody."

It sounded bad. Allie knew it was the kind of thing someone else might find worrying. But all Allie felt was pain.

"She's going to take you to her facility," Daisy went on, reaching out to stroke Allie's hair.

It felt good, for a few brief seconds.

"Jemma and I are going to go with you," Daisy said. "You'll never be alone."

 _I'm already alone_ , Allie thought.

"We'll keep you safe, and we'll make sure you get back here. I promise."

Allie blinked, and when she was able to get her eyes open again Jemma was kneeling next to the bed. "I'm going to give you some pain medication," the Brit said gently. "You'll sleep all the way there. Daisy and I will be right aside you to monitor your condition."

 _Please don't leave me_ , Allie begged silently.

"We'll be right here," Jemma promised, though there was no way she'd heard Allie's thoughts. "Little pinch."

Allie was sure that to an ordinary person, the "little pinch" would have registered. But if the needle stick actually felt like something, it was swallowed up in her body's ocean of pain.

She blinked once more before slipping below the surface of that dark, roiling ocean herself.

* * *

Daisy and Jemma sat by Allie's bedside. They were bundled into the back of an unmarked ambulance, setting off for destinations unknown. Jemma's eyes stayed on Allie, scanning the girl up and down, checking monitors and settings.

"We need to have a plan," Daisy murmured to Jemma. The ATCU agents, either too nervous to want to risk sitting in the rear of the ambulance or too confident that neither Jemma nor Daisy would risk Allie's life by doing something stupid, were in the front cab of the vehicle. Still, there was no reason to assume they couldn't somehow be monitoring everything happening in the rear of the ambulance.

"I agree," Jemma replied. "Thoughts?"

"Can you carry her?"

"Of course I can. So can you. She only weighs forty-five pounds, remember?"

"I know," Daisy said. "I meant if we were in a situation where we needed to run. I could use my powers, but I need my hands free. Can you carry her and her equipment?"

Jemma nodded. "But… let's not make that our first choice, shall we?"

She looked down at Allie, gently taking the girl's hand in hers. "What happened to her back at the base, Daisy?"

"I have no clue," Daisy answered honestly. She brought her own hand up and ran her fingers over the burned code on Allie's hairline. "I can't even figure out what this is supposed to be. It's programming language, but nothing I speak. It's… beyond even me. She's so beyond me, beyond any of us, and we're basically driving her into her grave."

"Don't say that," Jemma said softly but firmly. "We're here. We're not going to let anything happen to her."

* * *

The door to the cell banged open and two guards marched in, grabbing Patrick and hauling him upright.

"Good news for you," one of them said. "We found your freak sister. She's on her way here right now."

Patrick looked up into the uncaring eyes of the guard. _Don't let this get to you_ , he thought, forcing his breathing to remain regular, as though he couldn't care less. _Don't show them how afraid you are for Lis_.

"Found her with a bunch of SHIELD agents," the guard continued. "Word we got from dispatch is they were experimenting on her. Treating her good, but keeping her locked down so she couldn't use her powers… whatever the hell they are."

"Til she up and killed Barry," the other guard muttered.

The first guard shot his compatriot a dirty look.

Patrick's stomach began to churn. _No. Not Lis. Lis has never killed anyone in her life. She's not violent. She's not mean. She's… she's helpless. How…?_

"Won't be long now until you're all here, reunited, and you can have a chance to say goodbye before we put you in containment," the guard told Patrick, jabbing him in the stomach with his baton. "And then… lights out."

They dumped Patrick to the floor and walked out, slamming the cell door closed behind them.

Patrick lay there in a heap, tears streaming down his face. _I can't let them hurt her. I can't let them hurt Lis._

And for the thousandth time since he'd been captured by the ATCU, he reached up and tried to remove the device over his mouth, the one preventing him from speaking – the one preventing him from forcing all of the guards and soldiers and _agents_ (God, that word left a bad taste in his mouth) to raze their own buildings to the ground, to move aside as he rescued his sister from whoever was hell-bent on hurting her.

* * *

Jemma dozed off two hours or so into the journey, after forcing Daisy to promise she'd be awakened immediately upon any change in Allie's condition. Daisy, of course, promised, and settled back against the wall of the ambulance, her eyes on Allie's equipment.

Twenty minutes of that was more boring than watching Hunter play video games, so Daisy turned her attention to an item she'd grabbed from the base before their departure. It was a beat-up blue backpack with several brightly-colored keychains hanging from it. _Lis_ was written on it in a careful mannish hand. Daisy had dug it out of the pile of Allie's equipment and luggage; Mack and Bobbi were able to point her in the right direction as to its location, but neither of them wanted to go into the storage room to find it. Daisy couldn't argue with that – they'd all been affected by Andrew's transformation into Lash, and she had a natural immunity to the crystals that not many others on base shared.

Thinking of Andrew was like a punch in the chest, and Daisy immediately wished he could be there. He'd know what to say to Allie to help her. To somehow make the loss of everything familiar seem more normal. There was nothing Daisy could say that would ever be good enough, and knowing that seemed like a failure on her part.

Allie was beyond anything she'd ever seen an Inhuman do. _Except for Lash_.

Maybe that was why she thought Andrew could solve things.

Daisy shook her head and carefully unzipped the backpack.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting to find, but the bag's underwhelming contents unnerved her. A zippered pouch made out of bright teal satin that, upon investigation, contained a variety of medical supplies. A series of grimy, badly-made friendship bracelets that clearly had spent more time at the bottom of the backpack than they ever had on someone's wrist. A stack of index cards bound together with a rubber band and kept in a well-worn plastic baggie; the Chinese characters across their fronts were incomprehensible to Daisy's eyes. Two Jane Austen novels, both with the inscription _Property of Aliselyn Darianne Shinn_ scrawled in the front in that same careful mannish hand. A three-coin charm like the one Jiaying had tried to give Daisy. An unmarked bottle of a thick, gluey liquid Daisy assumed was medication. A bracelet made of delicate metal stars linked together with thin, airy filaments of silver.

And sandwiched in with all that other junk, Allie's computer.

Daisy pulled it out and set it on her lap. It was a high-end laptop, the kind preferred by hard-core gamers. The case gleamed a deep, seductive turquoise in the low light of the ambulance. There was something odd about it, something that practically hummed with power, even in its inert, powered-down form, as though this particular computer didn't run on electricity but on Allie's soul alone.

It was a little intimidating.

Daisy looked up at the girl on the stretcher. Allie's lips beneath the ventilator mask were chapped and still ruddy with blood. Other parts of her face bore smeared bloodstains from the hurried clean-up she'd received before leaving the Playground. The code burned into her hairline seemed to be weeping a yellowish fluid. Daisy leaned forward and gently wiped it away with a gauze square. Devoid of the scrim of fluid, the code still made no sense.

"Let's see what secrets you've been hiding, internet in a bottle," Daisy murmured.

She opened the laptop and, with a slight beat of hesitation, hit the power button.

* * *

"Dragon lady's still here," Mack said to Coulson as he passed by the director's office.

"What?" Coulson looked up from his coffee. He'd been under the impression Rosalind Price had left with her team more than three hours previously.

"Says she's not leaving until she gets answers."

"Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

Mack shrugged. "Well, partly because I've been helping Bobbi clean up the containment pod and file all of our guest's test results… and partly because I thought it was some kind of sweet justice to keep her waiting."

Coulson groaned. "Thanks, Mack."

"You're welcome. She's in the conference room no one ever uses," Mack said, and he gave a cheeky salute as he headed off down the hallway.

Coulson grabbed his coffee and the somewhat-completed file on Allie Shinn before heading to "the conference room no one ever uses," as Mack had so eloquently referred to it. The room wasn't bad, just out of the way and rather small for their purposes. Generally it was used as an overflow storage room; the last Coulson could remember, it held an oddly-shaped table, three chairs, a blackboard, several out-of-date overhead projectors (why they were still around, no one quite knew), a filing cabinet full of SHIELD memorabilia, and sixteen Rolodexes.

Price was indeed sitting at the table, surrounded by ancient office supplies. Her expression, he surmised, was meant to be one of haughty anger and reproach, but when he walked in, her eyes solely expressed relief. "It's about time," she snapped.

"I thought you'd gone with your team," Coulson said mildly. He stood in the doorway, taking a sip from his coffee.

"I'm waiting for your team to release Agent Barry's body," Price retorted. "Apparently they're 'running tests.'"

"I'm sure they are," Coulson said.

"Well, while we're waiting, let's talk about your Inhuman freak," Price spat.

Something cold and heavy, like a frigid fist, closed around Coulson's ribcage. Despite the front he'd shown to Daisy, for some reason the thought of anyone referring to Allie as a freak nearly physically _hurt_ him. She was just a defenseless kid.

"Defenseless?" Price snorted, and Coulson realized he'd spoken the last sentence out loud. "She killed a man without moving any part of her body. Nothing about that screams 'defenseless' to me."

"It was an accident," Coulson said quietly. _One we drove her to_ , he added in his head. If Allie hadn't been terrified, if she hadn't been in the Faraday cage, if they hadn't separated her from everything she knew and everyone she loved, if she hadn't tried to lash out at her captors in the only way she knew how, if if, if.

"Nothing they do is an accident," Price informed him.

"Inhumans are not a 'they'!" Coulson snapped. "Each one of them is a _person_! A person who might be sixteen years old, physically incapable of doing much beyond breathing, and who's been stripped of everything she knows and holds dear. And you – who do you think you _are_ , barging in here to take her away from the first place she's felt stable in _months?"_

Price rose to her feet. "I'm the US government, and…"

"Oh, bullshit," Coulson said, shaking his head. "You're one woman trying to contain a tsunami. Do you really think the rest of the world is going to treat the ATCU so kindly once they find out what you've done to Allie Shinn?"

He held up his report.

Price, her face never changing expression, held up her phone. "And do you ever think you'll see that girl again once the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff receive my report on how one tiny handicapped girl managed to kill a top ATCU agent?"

She laughed; it sounded like iron nails on a slate roof. "The only place she's going is a jail, Coulson. She'll be lucky if they don't give her the death penalty. Of course, body like hers, that'd probably be a mercy."

* * *

At first Daisy thought the computer was simply suffering from a dead battery. After all, it had been in storage for six long months during Allie's shut-down. A dead battery would be the logical inference.

Then she realized the black screen contained a cursor, blinking at her like a quick but judgmental eye.

Before she could type a command, words appeared, white on the black. **Earthquake girl. You trying to follow me into the beyond?**

Daisy jerked back as though shot. Her eyes went immediately to Allie's physical form. The girl was still motionless.

 **Yeah, I'm talking to you** appeared on the screen.

Still in disbelief, Daisy raised her fingers to the keyboard. **How are you doing this?**

 **It's my secret. I'm always on. And you – you're looking for** **my** **secrets?**

 **What are you, a mind reader?**

Some part of Daisy's brain registered a smile. She wasn't sure how, or _why_ , but she immediately got the sense that Allie was smiling.

 **No, I'm just perceptive. Comes from not speaking for eleven years. Generally people want to know what others are thinking, and generally those others can answer. Since I can't – and won't – answer, they have to come looking. You're the first one the machine's allowed in in years.**

Daisy reread the final sentence a few times. **I assume you're going to explain that.**

 **I really can't.** Another mental smile. **Seriously. There's no explaining it. My computer and I… we're the same person. Sort of. It's got the capability to be the me I can't be, and in return I taught it how to guard my secrets. If I don't want someone to get in, they don't. But you… you shook things up.**

Daisy could swear she heard laughter. **You're downright weird, Allie Shinn.**

 **Damn straight. But you didn't come here to talk to me, so…** The computer screen winked out from black with white text, showing instead a desktop with two folders – one labeled "Secrets", the other labeled "Photos." A dialogue box on the right side of the screen contained the conversation Allie was having with Daisy. **Have a look at whatever it'll show you. You're going to wish you hadn't, but you got this far, so I'm not going to stop you.**

 **I'm telling you now, I don't want to read any weird fanfic.**

 **I keep that all in my head. And unless I'm wrong, we're running out of time for you to come up with some brilliant secret agent plan, so get to it. See you on the other side, earthquake girl.**

The dialogue window disappeared. Daisy looked over at Allie again. Seeing no change in the monitors or machines, she opened the folder marked "Secrets" and clicked on the first document of four: "this is how it starts."

 _This is how it starts. When I'm six years old, my father leaves. His name is Laojzek Mordechai Shinn, and he is Inhuman like his father before him and his father before that. Yeah, that was a "Star Wars" reference. It's one of like three movies I've seen in real life, so… make of that what you will._

 _He left because of me. I know a lot of kids of divorce or separation think that, or say that. Very few of them are actually correct. My father saw what happened after I came through the Mist and realized he'd rather leave his entire family and the place he'd lived for nearly twenty years and all of the connections he'd created therein, rather than continue to live with a daughter who, for two years immediately following her Terrigenesis, lay motionless in a bed, connected to a handful of machines. Who didn't breathe on her own for two years. Who has not, to this day, done anything she used to do. Who has never been able to break out of the body the Mist gave her._

 _I was a broken, disgusting mess. I can't fault my father for leaving, no matter how much I hate him for doing it._

 _I just wish I knew where he was now._

 _I wonder if he ever thinks about me._

 _I wonder what he'd think of me now._

* * *

The next file was marked: "this is how i died (the first time)."

 _At the age of ten I thought I knew how the world worked. My mother did… something… for Jiaying. In return, Jiaying made sure my mother and I were taken care of. But I had the gall to believe that this equation was founded on actual human feelings, that if my mother in some way failed to perform, that Jiaying would make sure we were still taken care of._

 _God, I was a child._

 _Jiaying didn't care about us._

 _My transformation was supposed to be glorious. The elders don't agree to send a five-year-old through the Mist unless they're assured something beyond the norm is going to take place. I was supposed to be magnificent. Instead I ended up a crippled shell of a girl propelled by rage and little else. For the first time in her leadership, Jiaying was_ _wrong_ _, and it changed how everyone thought of her._

 _I was her failure, and I just wouldn't. Go. Away._

 _My mother tried her best. I'm sure it wasn't her normal best; like everyone else around me, she ended up broken by my transformation. Apparently that lack of commitment to whatever it was she did for Jiaying finally got to our esteemed leader, and Jiaying fought back in the pettiest way she could – she went after me._

 _For two weeks I was given nothing but water through my feeding tube. I was not given my ventilator, or supplemental oxygen, when sleeping. I was rarely turned. The little amount of physical therapy I could do was ceased. I lay in puddles of my own filth and drool for hours. I'm beyond positive that I aspirated saliva multiple times, since suctioning went by the wayside. I developed an open bedsore the size of a grown man's fist at the base of my spine (or where the base of someone normal's spine would be)._

 _And then – shocker – my heart decided it'd had enough, and it gave up the ghost._

 _To this day I'm not entirely certain of how I made it back. Lincoln was there, I know that, and another doctor. The whole place seethed with anger. The same Inhumans who were already furious with how desperate Jiaying seemed to be, sending a five-year-old through the Mist, got even angrier. Maybe the sheer force of their anger brought me back._

 _I'm not entirely certain I really wanted to_ _come_ _back, but the world's weird like that._

 _Apparently the same world that took everything from me still isn't done with me._

 _It had better get used to disappointment. I don't have anything left to give._

* * *

Incongruously, the third file was named "this is how a.d.s. plays the last of us."

 _My brother bought a PlayStation of some sort. I don't know where he got it. I don't know where he got the money to get it. I don't really want to know._

 _He said it was for him and "most definitely_ _not_ _for you, Lis" which is like saying "this tasty food I left out at a campsite is most definitely_ _not_ _for you, bears." The second he left for the morning I was into that joy-box like the second coming._

 _He has two games. I'll give the other one a try at some point, but he'd left "The Last of Us" in the drive (and, oddly enough, that's one thing the cyperpathic abilities haven't been able to allow me to do – change physical discs in a physical drive), so that's what I played._

 _I wonder how regular folks get along having to use controllers to do all their video game stuff. It seems so clunky. So alien. They have to mash buttons to shoot guns, talk to other characters, make decisions – it's all so fragmented and unlike the real world. Now me? I get to inhabit the characters, make their bodies mine, make choices and fire weapons and run and it feels like everything I've been missing. It makes the story so much realer. It's addicting._

 _I don't mess around with stupid shit like Tetris anymore. Or Candy Crush. No ma'am. I'm a hardcore first-person shooter kind of gal. Anything where I can spam-type idiot fourteen-year-olds from New Jersey, yes please. Anything with robots and guns and space travel and badasses and zombies and magic and an impossible mission and preferably a plot, yes please, give it to me._

" _The Last of Us" blows 'em all out of the water. More on this later. But suffice it to say that aside from being repositioned and suctioned, today I have done nothing besides play TLoU. Patrick got mad because I wouldn't even let him shut it off to do my breathing treatments and coughing._

 _He shouldn't be so mean to me. I took down an army of clickers today. I'm on my way to saving humanity. Doesn't he know I'm unstoppable?_

Daisy raised her head and smiled at Allie. She and Mack hadn't gotten around to playing "The Last of Us," but what from Daisy had heard about it, it was definitely a kickass game. When Allie was awake and the ATCU wasn't up to their same old tricks, Earthquake Girl and Internet in a Bottle ( _awesome superhero names,_ Daisy congratulated herself) would have to go off and save humanity together. But, like, _not_ for real.

The last document was called "this is how patrick gets a gun."

Daisy's heart sank, but she couldn't look away. Her fingers wouldn't let her leave it there, and like traitorous snakes they double-clicked on the document and it sprang to life.

* * *

 _My name is Aliselyn Darianne Shinn, and being of extremely sound mind and not-sound body, I am recording what I believe might be my last testament._

 _My brother, Patrick Shinn, has acquired a firearm. I don't know where he got it from. I don't know what kind. I don't like thinking about it. I didn't like when he showed it to me._

 _I am saying plainly right now that_ _he never abused me_ _. He has not neglected any of my medical treatments or my physical health. But he leaves me alone for the majority of the day. He comes home smelling like cigarettes and alcohol. I'm pretty sure he's paying someone to come in and reposition me and suction me during the day, because during the day he's never the one who comes to do it. He leaves TLoU in the PlayStation all the time and he doesn't say anything about me not using it. He is distant and moody and he is sharp with me._

 _Last night everything came to a head. During my last treatment before bed I was having a hard time breathing and when he coughed me I almost vomited. He slapped me and I screamed at him; when he put the suction tube in my mouth I bit his hand._

 _He yelled, "Don't you know how much I've sacrificed to keep you safe? Don't you know that everyone here wonders what you're still doing alive, taking up space, wasting resources? Don't you know how much they all want you dead?"_

 _Then he took out the gun and held it up to my head._

 _I swear to whatever deity's fucked up my life, I wasn't scared. I looked at him, dead in the eyes, and I got my computer to speak. It said for me, "I've waited my entire life to die, Patrick. I've imagined the end of my life a thousand times since this morning. I've spent hours in the dark forcing myself to keep breathing because the thought of leaving you broke my heart. And now that we're here, I realize it might as well end this way. Make sure you tell them I fought back, or whatever bullshit you need to justify doing this. They might want me dead but they never wanted you here, no matter what you tell yourself."_

 _He slapped me again and stormed outside._

 _I am not terrified for my own life. I am terrified for the lives of everyone around me when Patrick finally snaps. He will not realize what he's done until I'm already gone, and the weight of my death will cause him to lash out at the entire world._

 _It will not be pretty. I'm sorry._

It was dated three days before the War on the Inhumans started.

Daisy looked up with a start, remembering that in all of her interactions with Allie, the girl had never expressed any desire to see her brother. She'd asked about him, tried to figure out where he was, but she'd never said she missed him. She said she needed to know where he was; she hadn't specified _why_.

This solidified what Daisy had only hypothesized to Coulson earlier: Allie was scared of her brother. Scared of what he was going to do to anyone who got close to her.

A camp Daisy now firmly occupied.

The ambulance slowed. Next to Daisy, Jemma stirred. "Wha's happening?" she murmured blearily.

Daisy quickly closed the laptop and shoved it into Allie's backpack. No matter what else happened, Daisy had two priorities – protect Allie and protect her computer. They'd become one and the same, and Daisy would be damned if Allie had to lose one more thing she loved.

"We're here."

 _Now it begins._


End file.
